The Mindwalker Ninja
by Rashaka
Summary: A story for Yamanaka Ino: number one kunoichi in her class, leader of Team 10, and proud shinobi of the Leaf people. Updated to chapter 10.
1. Mind Your Mind

Notes: I'm usually not interested in writing multi-chaptered fics about minor characters, but for some reason Ino's jutsu abilities tickled a little plot bunny in me last night. So here's the start of something that I'll probably add to sporadically over time: a long fic about Ino, her abilities, how she grew up, and her future, based around her progression and growth as a ninja.

Suggested listening music: "Doctors of Deliverance" by Crooked Fingers, on repeat.

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**The Mindwalker Ninja**

**1 – Mind Your Mind**

Yamanaka Inoshi had a favorite saying, a small diamond of wisdom that was his family's answer to every situation—every "what if" that the youngest apprentice asked and every nightmare that haunted battle-worn ninjas in their sleep. From his great-grandfather to his grandmother to his mother it was passed, and from his mother to him to his own little girl. It was simple, short, and he was determined to make sure it was the first sentence that Ino learned to speak.

He held his newborn daughter in his arms, and whispered to her through the tears as they covered his wife's body with a hospital sheet.

"Mind your mind, little Ino."

The phrase had a myriad of purposes for the Yamanaka clan; the practical definition of it was "Watch your head," asking a loved one to be careful and take care. There was also the meaning as it applied to little children, to obey one's conscience and always do right. And just as easily it meant "don't sulk" or "think it over."

The abstract, and ultimately truest definition was a literal interpretation of the phrase. Be aware of mental traps, be aware of invaders, and be aware of genjutsu. To protect your mind from assault and from madness, because in the end you had nothing more precious than your inner self and your power of reason. But it meant more than just to guard one's mind, it meant to be aware of one's thoughts at all times— to know your own thoughts before you know anything else, because in the end a strong mind was the house of a strong ninja.

It should be no surprise that confidence and force of personality came easy to Yamanaka children.


	2. Psychic

**2 – Psychic**

"Daddy, are you psychic?"

Inoshi hoisted his daughter up till she sat on the tabletop, little blue-shoed feet dangling prettily, and looked her in the eyes.

"That's an interesting word, Ino. What do you think it means?"

"I dunno. You can tell me!"

"Usually, it can mean two things: it means someone who knows the future before it happens, or it means someone who can know another person's thoughts before they speak, looking into their minds as if reading a book."

The three and a half year old, hair the color of fresh snow, smiled a toothy smile. "Then you are psychic! And Aunt Tari too!"

Ino raised his eyebrows. "How so?"

"You can go into, into-- in other persons' heads, right? And make them do stuff."

Inoshi grinned, and ruffled his daughter's hair. "It's not exactly the same, but that's very smart of you, Ino. No, I'm not a psychic because I can't hear what other people are thinking all the time-- that's what a psychic does. I have to use ninjutsu techniques. But my great-grandfather was."

"Really?"

"Really. And you know what he always told me, when I was little just like you?"

"What?"

"Mind your mind."

"But you always say that!"

Inoshi laughed, and kissed his daughter in the center of her forehead, where he knew one day a leaf sigul would proudly rest. "That's because it's good advice."


	3. Lesson

**3 – Lesson**

Six-year-old Ino slouched rebelliously in her kneeling position on the mat floor. Directly across from her knelt her aunt, a cold-faced woman of honey-colored hair and darting eyes. Ino knew her aunt would rather be out doing missions than training her younger sibling's child, but the Hokage had requested Inoshi personally as a last minute replacement for a jounin too sick to travel, and she'd gotten guilted into short-notice babysitting duty. Ino didn't like her aunt very much, and found the idea of running over to Sakura's house to play much more appealing than training under a woman who'd always been a little too frightening to love.

"Ino, sit up straight. Ninjas do not slouch."

"I want to go out and play."

"No. You will train with me this afternoon. It's been a while since I've seen how much you know."

"You're mean! Training with you is boring! I'm going to Sakura's house!" No sooner had Ino spoken and started to stand than the woman formed four successive hand seals, and Ino's little body froze in position.

She didn't know what was going on, but suddenly her arms and her legs were stuck. In a panic, Ino retreated instantly and reactively to her imaginary room, a place that didn't exist anywhere except in her head. When she stood in her Dogan (that's what her Daddy called his imaginary place, after all), she was frightened to realize someone had already beaten her there. Ino looked at the intruder, and started to cry.

"You're not supposed to be here too! Aunt Tari, you're scaring me! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to be rude! Don't punish me!"

"Oh stop crying, Ino. Tears need not exist here unless you allow yourself to be weak enough to believe they do. You're almost seven; act your age." Tari Yamanaka, a woman of imposing height even in imaginary world created by a child, strode forward and knelt to look her only niece in the eyes, as much as things like eyes meant anything here.

"Ino." The little girl sniffled, and hiccupped.

"Yes?"

"Do you know where we are?"

"Yes."

"And do you know how I can come in here, and make you seem small and me seem big?"

"Yes. You did a Yamanaka special jutsu and took over my mind, just like Daddy can do."

"Do you know why I was able to do it?"

"I wasn't minding my mind."

"Right. Now, when I release you from the jutsu, you're going to sit up straight like a ninja should, and we're going to train. I don't care if you think I'm mean or boring, Ino. I care that you grow up as a strong Yamanaka ninja who lets herself be ruled by no one. You will respect me when I'm your sitter, and you will train your hardest when I tell you to."

"Okay."

The room of Ino's inner thoughts receded like the mouth of a tunnel in the distance, and Ino found herself able to move her body freely again. She quickly wiped her wet cheeks with one small, soft hand, and sat up a little straighter. Her aunt smirked in a way that should have made her pretty, but somehow didn't.

"Now that that childishness is over, let us get started."

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Author's note: from here on I will be using a term borrowed from _The Dark Tower_ books by **Stephen King**: the Dogan. Because I find it is a good name that adapts pretty well to my ideas. It's just a little thing in terms of the story, but I thought better to let you all know. That series is Stephen King's magnum opus, by the way, and you all should read it.


	4. Doors In the Mind

**4 – Doors In The Mind**

"'Mind your mind."

To know yourself and to always be the sole master of your own thoughts.

It is based on the philosophy that logic is perception, and nothing can compete with the power of self-belief. For example, you cannot convince a sentient being that they do not exist. To empower your mind you must employ the same principle: to conquer another's mind you must know that your mind is stronger than theirs. And to protect your mind from invasion, you must do more than believe-- you must know, in every fiber of your physical body and every room of your mental house, that you are who you are, and no one rules here but you. It is the power of realization of self.

Yamanaka children are taught to organize their minds in terms of rooms. Your mind is your house, and guard it well. It began with the centermost room, the Dogan. From this one's consciousness connects to one's body. To move every muscle, to pump lifeblood through the warrior's heart, to send air through the lungs to fill the chest, to send waves of charka out beyond yourself: all these things were controlled in that central room—the heart of the mind, as it were. The appearance of the room often changed with emotions: sometimes it was a cave, and sometimes it was a tree house, and sometimes it was library.

From the Dogan one could take three doors. One door lead to memory, which stretched beyond the conscious into the unconscious, and further still to the lost fleeting thoughts of infanthood. This door was to be guarded always. The second door lead to imagination, to dreams of the future and plans both great and small. This door was passed through often, whether it be to ponder what life held in store or to sort out the answer to a riddle on a cereal box, for with imagination came creativity. And with creativity came fear, for fear was just another kind of imagination. The last door was the door least accessed and most fiercely protected. It was the door out.

Yamanaka children are not born able to conceive of the third door. They try and try but they can never hold it in their thoughts, never give it form and shape. It does not come to them until they learn the first jutsu of their clan, the jutsu of projection called "Winged Self." A precursor to "Shintenshin no Jutsu", the "Winged Self" allows your consciousness to separate from your body, without a precise destination in mind. And it is with this first separation that the third door of the mind is created-- because if one wishes to travel, there must first be a way that is open.

Yamanaka children are taught that the mind is a fortress, a castle, a house, and guarding the house, guarding the mind, is paramount. After a Yamanaka ninja completes the first jutsu of the clan, she begins extensive mental training to protect this new weakness. For while a door is not needed to enter an average person's mind, if a door has been created then forever after that door is the _only_ method of passage to that mind, and a door that leads outward leads inward too.

Mind _your _mind, they tell little Ino, then you will learn to conquer others.

The concept of a Dogan and halls of memories and dreams is not restricted to the Yamanaka clan, although they remain the only family in Konoha to refine the concept and practice it till they temper their minds to a fine and lethal tool. It is an idea that comes easily to sentient beings, and other humans create their own versions of it sometimes with no training at all. The Konoha village has its share of these—

—the last great scion of Uchiha saw his mind as a desert meeting an ocean, and pulled his victims into this wasteland with a steady gaze of blood red eyes—

—a young girl of a civilian family but a ninja heart shared her fortress with aspects of herself, where she was often at war; her mind was no good for conquering, because to conquer a divided mind required a level of mental discipline that few achieved in their own houses, much less another's—

—and deep on the fringes of the society of The Leaf People, a little boy lived with a mind of tunnels and traps, and below his version of the Dogan lay a maze so vast it could imprison a god—

—but they are few and far between, for who but the eccentric Yamanaka clan, small and not particularly noteworthy or famous, would view a partitioned mind something to aspire to?


	5. Not Enough

**5 – Not Enough**

The night of her failure at chunin exams, Ino hunted down her father at the bar and dragged him home with a cursory glance at the elder Akamichi and Nara ninjas. She shoved her father toward the kitchen table and thrust a hot cup of coffee into his hands.

"What's this about, Princess?" he asked, gamely sipping the drink. Ino plopped into the seat across from him, blue eyes focused.

"I need you sober right now. I'm still all hyped up from the exam—and I've got so many questions!"

Inoshi's lips never left the coffee mug and he gestured at his daughter with a roundabout waving motion. _Well, come on, out with it._

"Sakura and I had a double-knock out in the preliminaries."

"Really? Well, I'm proud of you for making it that far-- fighting the preliminaries after 5 days of a brutal survival race in the Forest of Death is no joke, especially for a first year genin."

"No kidding! It was hard. And scary too! It's a good thing I'm _way_ too pretty to die young." Ino's father had no reaction to this; he was far too used to it by now. "But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about."

Inoshi was now leaning over with his elbows on the table and the coffee mug held tenderly between his hands like a kitten or some other furry, beloved infant animal that needed to be petted and clung to. _Coffee. Coffeecoffeecoffee._

"I used the Shintenshin no Jutsu in my fight against Sakura in the prelims. She--"

"How'd you trap her?"

"--what? Oh, I cut my hair and lured her to stepping on a chakra bridge I made of it. Anyway--"

"Really?" He squinted at her, and his gradually-less-drunk vision finally picked up the fact that her gloriously long ponytail was, indeed, suspiciously absent. "That was clever of you; it's too bad about your hair though."

"Would you pay attention, Dad!"

"Sure sure. Ask your questions." He went back to his coffee, which wasn't likely to yell at him for something.

"As I was saying, I used the Shintenshin. I caught her in it perfectly too—her Dogan was just this big empty space all purple and blue and black, she must have no imagination!—and though I had a limited amount of chakra left, I was this close—" she held out her thumb and forefinger and waved it in her father's face to demonstrate, "—to making the word 'forfeit' come out of her mouth. I should have been able to do it too, but she stalled me with this bizarre split personality, and I ran out of chakra and she overpowered my jutsu."

"So... what was your question again?"

"Sakura has a split personality! And the other one was scary as hell! I had her under my control; why couldn't I control the second one too! And how does she even have two minds like that?"

Inoshi shrugged noncommittally. "Some people have a dissociative personality disorder, and they have two or more selfs. If she really has a split personality, it's possible the second one has never manifested beyond her own mind, never taken control, so then it's not surprising you didn't know. It's possible the conscious Sakura isn't even entirely aware of her other self."

"But why was the other one so strong? Why couldn't I beat her-- I've taken over Sakura's mind once before and both that time and this time it was easy to get in with the Shintenshin."

"Ino, controlling split personalities require a more skilled approach to the Shintenshin no Jutsu that you might not be capable of yet, and may never be. You can't guess which of the halves is stronger and should be overcome first, and you might find it taxes your abilities and your chakra reserves to take the time and energy to overcome both of them. On top of that, a person with multiple personalities might be prone to developing more, even spontaneously— you don't know how many you'd have to fight. Most of the time I'd recommend against using the Shintenshin and go for a different jutsu."

"But what if I have to?"

"Then, try to overpower the dominant personality, and be quick. If you're fast enough, you might get them to obey you and be out again before they have a chance to put up a fight. The longer the mental battle, your chances of winning are diminished. And mind your mind— you don't want any of her little bits following you back when you return to your own body."

Ino sighed and put her chin in her hands, eyes drifting gloomily to the table. Her father made a face at this. He wondered if he should try offering comfort or some other fatherly duty. But she might not take it well; he was new to handling this strange almost-teenage creature that, a year or two ago, would have been happy with just a hug and piggy-back ride.

"Don't look too sad, Ino. Take into account that Sakura might also just be a naturally strong personality that's apt to resist mental techniques. Some people are harder than others, and your level of charka right now is not enough." He raised his mug for another sip, and frowned. "Damn, I'm out of coffee."

"I'll make you some more— if you stand right now you're liable to faint on the spot. And I'm not really sad, Dad. I was just thinking about Sasuke, and how much I would have liked to beat Sakura in front of everyone to prove to Sasuke and the rest that I'm the better shinobi than _her_."

Inoshi shrugged again; it was his standard reaction to everything when drunk or barely coming out of being so.

"Practice more."


	6. Home Safe

Author's Note:

From this point on the chapters will have spoilers up to chapter 244 of the manga and beyond. If you're only watching the anime, I advise against you reading this story. Particularly this chapter, and a few chapters ahead when my version of the events post-manga-time-gap starts.

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**6 – Home Safe**

It took an extra step to keep herself from slipping as she rounded the corner of the slippery hospital corridor, but being graceful and feminine didn't matter when she could finally see her teammate, whole and unbroken, standing two doors away. She yelled out his name in two leaps was on him, hugging like she'd never hugged anyone but her closest family before. _He was safe, he was alive!_

"Ino!"

"Shikamaru! You're okay! Where's Chouji? Can we see him?"

The boy's breath faltered under the barrage of questions and the sudden armful of pretty girl, pretty _Ino_. He'd only ever held her this close when guarding her body, and this felt radically different because she was clinging to him instead. He hated himself for even thinking about it when Chouji was a room away in critical condition, but Shikamaru was an emotional wellspring right now. Fear, anger, grief, relief, sadness, hope: everything from the last few days was on the surface and he couldn't help but add these new sensations too and memorize them, etching the feelings into his thoughts for later examination.

Then it was over and she was shaking his shoulders in that tempestuous Ino way, asking about Chouji again.

"Can we see him, Shikamaru! Is he out of critical condition?"

"You can't see him just yet because his body's still in critical, but he's going to make it. The Hokage made an antidote to his soldier pill, and he's over the worst of it."

Ino stepped back and slumped against the wall, sliding down to the hospital bench. "I'm so relieved," she said, smiling up at him weakly. "What about everyone else?"

Shikamaru joined her on the bench, closer than he normally would have sat but careful not to be touching. He tried to relax too and let himself feel relief, but as tired as he was his body still wanted to react like he was in battle and every muscle felt tense.

"Naruto has been beaten up pretty badly and Kiba's wounded, but they're going to be okay. Neji is still being operated on by the medic-nin, however. They won't let us near."

"Sakura said she was going to see Naruto; I don't know if she found him yet."

"I was thinking about going to see him. And Kiba too."

Ino nodded firmly, and stood with her hands on her waist. "I'll go check in on Kiba and tell him about Chouji. You should see Naruto, and make sure Sakura got there."

Her commanding tone and her bossy stance struck a chord in Shikamaru, and a wavery smile crossed his face. It was asituationblessed familiarity.Maybe letting someone else give the orders for a little while was okay right now. It would be wonderful to just obey decisions again, instead of making them.

"Alright. I don't think that would be too troublesome."


	7. Chunin Exam File: Candidate 63

DATE: 1ST YEAR OF THE REIGN OF 5TH HOKAGE

LOCATION: CREEK VILLAGE, LIGHTNING COUNTRY

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**CHUNIN EXAM FILE CANDIDATE # 63**

NAME: YAMANAKA INO

AGE: 13

EXAM TEAMMATES: # 62 AKAMICHI CHOUJI, # 64 HARUNO SAKURA

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EXAM HISTORY

_LEAF VILLAGE_, AGE 12

1ST EXAM: PASSED  
2ND EXAM: PASSED  
3RD EXAM PRELIMINARIES: FAILED  
3RD EXAM: DOES NOT QUALIFY

3RD EXAM PRELIMINARY RESULTS:  
CANDIDATE #63 SUFFERED A DOUBLE KNOCK-OUT W/ OPPONENT HARUNO SAKURA

**ANALYSIS**

TAIJUTSU: WEAK IN FORCE, WEAK IN STAMINA, ADEQUATE IN SPEED

GENJUTSU: NONE DISPLAYED

NINJUTSU: SHOWED IMPRESSIVE CONTROL OVER SHINTENSHIN NO JUTSU AND INVENTIVE MANIPULATION OF CHAKRA THROUGH STRANDS OF SEVERED HAIR. HOWEVER NO OTHER NINJUTSU TECHNIQUES WERE DEMONSTRATED AND CANDIDATE WAS UNABLE TO MAINTAIN CHAKRA OUTPUT LONG ENOUGH TO COMPLETELY UTILIZE SHINTENSHIN NO JUTSU.

**ADDITIONAL COMMENTS**

WHILE THE CANDIDATE WAS WEAK IN TAIJUTSU AND SUFFERED FROM LOW RESERVES OF CHAKRA AND DID NOT DEMONSTRATE A WIDE RANGE OF NINJUTSU TECHNIQUES, IT IS WORTH NOTING THAT THE CANDIDATE DISPLAYED IMPRESSIVE CLEVERNESS UNDER STRESS AND LURED HER OPPONENT HARUNO SAKURA INTO A TRAP THAT WAS SPAWNED DURING THE COURSE OF THE FIGHT AND OBVIOUSLY NOT PREPARED AHEAD OF TIME. THE CANDIDATE CREATED CHAINS OF CHAKRA TO TRAP HER OPONENT BY CUTTING HER OWN HAIR OBTENSIBLY IN A FIT OF ANGER AND SPREADING IT OVER THE TOURNAMENT GROUNDS. THIS RAW MANIPULATION OF CHAKRA WAS IMPRESSIVE, PARTICULARLY GIVEN THAT IT IS NOT A SPECIALTY OF INO YAMANAKA'S AND THAT THIS TRAP WAS CONCEIVED AND CARRIED OUT SUCCESSFULLY UNDER THE CONSIDERABLE COMBINED PRESSURE OF THE EXAM AND HER PERSONAL HISTORY WITH HER OPONENT.

IT IS NOT SURPRISING THAT INO FAILED AT THE PRELIMINARIES GIVEN HER PERFORMANCE, AND HAD SHE ADVANCED TO THE FINAL EXAM SHE WOULD HAVE FAILED THERE AS WELL. NEVERTHELESS, IF THE CANDIDATE CONTINUES TO IMPROVE AND WIDENS HER RANGE OF ABILITIIES, SHE IS EXPECTED TO MAKE CHUNIN RANK WITHIN HER NEXT THREE EXAM ATTEMPTS.

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_CREEK VILLAGE_, AGE 13

1ST EXAM: PASSED  
2ND EXAM: FAILED  
3RD EXAM PRELIMINARIES: DOES NOT QUALIFY  
3RD EXAM: DOES NOT QUALIFY

**ANALYSIS**

UNAVAILABLE

**ADDITIONAL COMMENTS**

CANDIDATES NO. 63 AND 64 WERE KNOCKED UNCONCIOUS BY FALLING DEBRIS CAUSED BY THE EARTHQUAKE THAT INTERRUPTED THE SURVIVAL EXAM. FEARING TRAUMATIC HEAD INJURIES, CANDIDATE #62 CARRIED HIS TEAMMATES TO THE EXAM PERIMETER AND FORFEITED. CANDIDATE 63 SUFFERED A SEVERE CONCUSSION AND WAS ATTENDED TO BY CREEK VILLAGE MEDIC-NIN. IT IS UNDETERMINED IF THE CANDIDATE MADE ANY SIGNIFICANT ADVANCES OVER HER ROOKIE EXAM PERFORMANCE.

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"Ino."

"Ino."

"Ino, wake up."

"That's it, Ino, wake up."

"Sakura?"

"That's me, Ino-pig. Do you feel okay?"

"I... yeah, I think so. Dizzy, mostly. What happened?"

"The earthquake. You and I were knocked out."

"Is the exam over?"

"The preliminaries are still going, but we're out for good. Chouji carried us out of the swamp and had to forfeit."

"Damn."

"Yeah."

"I trained so hard to prepare this time. I was going to decimate you, Forehead Girl. Everyone else too."

"I'm disappointed too, Ino-pig."

"I wanted that vest."

"I wanted to be able to tell Naruto I outrank him when he comes back."

"I hate swamps."

"I hate earthquakes."

"I hate Lightning Country."

"I hate being a foreigner."

"Next year I'm going to kick your ass, Forehead Girl."

"No way. Next year Tsunade'll have taught me to make your heart stop in your chest without even touching you."

"You're a big fat liar."


	8. New Developments

Thank you, everyone who has reviewed so far. I'm sorry these last two chapters took so long to get out in comparison to my earlier speed—I lost my computer for about 3 weeks and could write nothing. And then school happened.

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**8 – New Developments**

She came to him with an idea. A stupid, impossible, crazy idea.

_I want to turn the Shintenshin into a battle jutsu,_ she told him. _I want you to help me figure out how._

Shikamaru was never one for effort, much less anyone else's ambitions. Especially unrealistic ambitions.

_I thought applying that jutsu to multiple people was impossible, because you send your whole spirit outward._

But Ino only grinned at him, her sexy, bossy grin, and let him into her confidence:

_That's what I've been told, but I don't believe it. I think some part of me gets left behind to maintain a connection to my body; else why would loss of chakra affect me? No, it's very possible Shikamaru. And you're going to help me learn to do it._

Because Shikamaru could never say no to Yamanaka Ino for long, two months later he found himself standing in a grassy meadow outside the walls of Konoha, holding up the unconscious body of his former teammate and watching as Kiba and Hinata, the unlucky volunteers, did simultaneous jumping jacks a few feet away.

They jumped, they squatted, they turned in place. It was eerie the way their movements mirrored like dancers, an eeriness compounded by the ridiculous cross-eyed stare Ino was putting on their faces. The spectacle continued for a few more seconds before both members of Team 8 stopped with a jerk, a puzzled look replacing the clownish expressions. From her place leaning against Shikamaru's side, Ino stirred, lifting her head.

"Thanks guys," she said. "You can go now."

"Did it work?" Kiba asked.

"Can't tell, it's a secret," Ino replied with a wink. Hinata giggled, and Kiba shrugged his shoulders.

"Whatever. Let's got get something to eat, Hinata!" As soon as the others were out of earshot, Ino rounded on Shikamaru, laughing ecstatically.

"Did you see that?" she squealed. "It worked! It really worked! Just like we thought!"

"Yeah, I saw," the chunin replied, bemused as always by her enthusiasm. "It was pretty good. You still couldn't make them act separately, though."

"Who cares about separate, Shikamaru!" she crowed triumphantly, throwing her hands up. "You could at least pretend to be impressed. Did you _see_ what I just _did?_ I've made the Shintenshin a battle jutsu! I've done something not even my father or grandmother could—"

Shikamaru grabbed Ino's face in his hands and kissed her before she could finish her sentence. He held there for a moment, then pulled away.

"Okay, what the hell was—"

"I'm showing you how impressed I am."


	9. Final Round

This is one of my favorite chapters so far, and I hope you enjoy it. It's much longer than the rest; a treat for the long wait.

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**9 - Final Round**

The battle went precisely according to plan.

Her brief taijutsu just to get close enough to touch him: perfect.

The genjutsu she learned from Sakura who learned it from Shizune: perfect.

The ninjutsu to detect foreign chakra that Asuma taught all of team 10 their first year: perfect.

Her family's spying technique, modified for special combat: perfect.

What she was not prepared for were the consequences of winning.

"Begin!"

A fourteen year old Ino leapt into the air, fingers moving and charka flowing. Two bunshin clones to provide her cover, and she was on him. A kick, a punch, (one, two false clones disappearing in smoke as he blocked her every effort) a leap, a duck, and one moment when her hands, still forming seals as she attacked, brushed Shino's ankle.

_Perfect._

Ino went sliding across the grassy terrain, propelled by Shino's forceful strike. When she hit the boulder left by the previous combatants and stopped cold, she came up smiling. A little ways away, Shino was raising his hand and walking forward. Bugs spilled from his clothing and welled at his feet. Catching a sharp breath _(how her ribs ached!)_ Ino watched his hand stop, his steps falter, and his arms close defensively around his stomach.

_Yes, that's it,_ she whispered in her mind. _Sure feels real, doesn't it?_

The insects had ceased as their advance as their master fell to his knees, trying to will his mind to fight the melting of his organs and the boils that began to blossom on his skin.

Knowing her window was short, Ino began her third set of hand seals.

_Asuma, you will be proud of this._

The thin film of charka flowed over her skin in sheets, like trying on a new dress. Light, soft, explorative. Every cell of her skin it touched, always searching. It took three false alarms before victory was achieved: one beetle, delicate and small, rested on the nape of Ino's neck. Her wave of charka passed it and left it unbothered, sending Ino its precise location.

_There you are. Shino, you are so strong but so predictable._

When Ino prepared her final technique, no more than a minute had passed since the match began.

Nine hands seals flowed from her fingers in swift succession. It was a technique derived from the Shindashin no jutsu, modified into something far more functional: application to a multi-person battle. She had developed it with Shikamaru's help four months ago, and she'd been practicing it secretly ever since, careful not to reveal too much of her new ability to anyone but Asuma and her team. Now she would be showing it off to everyone, and it _would_ earn her the chunnin vest. Ino was not just hopeful, she was dead certain.

By the time she finished the final seal, Shino had begun to stagger up from his knees, beating the genjutsu away by pure force of will. Ino closed her hands together, and let her mind seep into the tiny, charka-eating insect at the nape of her neck.

In the world of humans and Hokages, Ino dropped to her knees on the tournament ground, upright but slack-boned. Her opponent was firmly on his feet now, the last threads of the illusion of pain drifting off of him and into nothingness. If she expected him to collapse under a genjutsu, no matter how convincing, she was dangerously flawed in her thinking. But the fact remained that she had cost him valuable time where he had not been able to track her movements. Now she was still, as if unconscious and upright at the same time, but the referee had not called the match. Why?

Shino advanced.

Ino felt cramped, like she was hiding under a bed she'd long since outgrown. It was dark, and quiet here. Her sisters and brothers were far away, so far away! But she could feel them. Moving, coming closer. They were linked, were they not? And she reached out through that link to touch them, to touch _all_ of them.

As if a button had been pushed, Shino felt his link with his bugs disappear. He stopped walking, and grabbed his head. He reached and reached and reached, but there was nothing! He could feel them physically, crawling through his body, and he could see them on the ground between himself and the unconscious girl, but he could sense _nothing_.

_I'm alone,_ he thought. _Oh god, I'm totally alone. What has she done to me?_

At this moment, Ino was in pieces. She felt herself gather, separate, gather again. She was her brothers, she was her sisters. She was so many.

_No!_ Shino screamed in his head. His whole life he had been with them. They were his! He could not let someone come between an Aburame and his sacred allies.

_I refuse to let you do this!_

In the scuttling darkness of four thousand minds, Ino something _push_. She felt pieces of herself being pulled away, separated. Like limbs. He was trying to take her arms, her legs, her eyes! No! She was many and she would not tolerate losses, she would not tolerate attack! She found the wall in the darkness, and _pushed_ back.

_They are mine! I have them now, they are mine! How dare you seek to rule us!_

Like a wave the swarm of insects, previously wavering in the air and on the ground between the two ninjas, flowed back toward the boy. They found the channels in his skin and filled his insides and covered his outside. Then, they began to gorge themselves, eating the chakra directly out every cell. Shino, age fourteen, screamed.

"I yield! I yield!"

He collapsed on the ground of the arena, body spasming in epileptic jerks, no longer able to speak.

_We are killing him. I don't want him to die. It is what we do. No, he is our physical host. His death would hurt us. It is what we do. Yes, it is what we do. It is what we do. It is what we do. It is what we do. _

_NO!_

Shino stopped shaking, and lay fallen and silent. Ino opened her eyes, slowly, but did not move.

"Winner: Yamanaka Ino."

A team of ninja in white coats ran into the arena, stopping at the boy's unconscious body and preparing a stretcher.

"Look at his energy patterns…"

"Blood flow to the heart was severely diminished by the obstruction of charka…"

"One more minute would have…"

"We've got to stabilize his system, the insects should help with that now…"

From low cliffs where the audience watched, two boys leapt into the arena and raced to their friend.

"Ino! Get up! You won!" Chouji shouted, forcefully cheerful. "They'll have to make you a chunnin now, after hijacking his bloodline technique like that."

The orange-haired boy reached out to touch her shoulder, and shake it gently. "Ino?"

Shikamaru crouched in front of his girlfriend, and tried to meet her eyes. "Ino? Can you hear us?" He reached out and touched her cheek, searching for some kind of reaction.

To his surprise, Ino raised her head. She looked Shikamaru in the eyes, and she began to scream. He grabbed her shoulders and tried to shake her out of it, but the sound kept pouring out, miserable and terrified. The arena had gone silent, except the two competing sounds of Ino's screams and the medic nin's equipment rustling and clanking as they carried Shino away.

"Ino!" Chouji fussed. "Ino, stop! You're okay! Shikamaru, god, what do we do?"

Without replying Shikamaru twisted his fingers into seals and cast a sleeping jutsu on their shrieking teammate. When she slumped forward and the horrible sound stopped, Shikamaru picked her up in his arms, and he and Chouji walked out from under the eyes of the stunned and disturbed audience.


	10. Fluke

**10 - Fluke**

The second chuunin exam in the reign of the fifth Hokage was hailed as the most exciting chuunin exam held by Leaf in a decade. It surpassed the previous exams not because the contestants were more powerful or the jutsus more dazzling, but because it was first and only time in a public exam that an Aburame ninja was conquered with his own blood-bonded insects. Such a feat was unheard of, and the implications mind-numbing. Contestants, judges, and observers of the event carried the story back to their own towns and hidden villages, disturbing news not only for the boy's clan, but for the plethora of other families that tied their ninjutsu so closely with animals.

Some of them must have wondered, when they heard the recounting of events spill from the lips of some excited traveler, how significant this could become. Had one girl single-handedly discovered the way to defeat a famously untouchable, unbreakable link? Would those who observed the contest be able to replicate her technique, to use against others? Was the technique tailor-made for the Aburame insect bond, or could it be adapted? What exactly had the child done, to leave so many speechless?

Then the other news would come._ Oh, you don't need to worry too much about that,_ a traveler would say. _Whatever it was she did, it put the poor thing in a coma. This after a bout of horrific screaming, right on the floor of the arena. No ninja worth his salt is fool enough to attempt what she did. What good is a technique if leaves you a vegetable?_

The traveler would have been right, as far as the medic-nins of Hidden Leaf were concerned. Ino had suffered for her victory, and suffered still. Although she'd sustained little physical damage—primarily bruises from the taijutsu combat—she remained comatose for thirty six days after the final match. Her condition was assumed to be mental in nature, and unfixable by conventional means. Fellow chuunin Nara Shikamaru had frequented her hospital room, guilting over the sleep jutsu he'd put her under at the end of the exam. The Hokage had attempted to explain to the boy that his jutsu had worn off and she'd been sleeping naturally at least three hours before she slipped into the coma, but logic does not always work on the young, no matter how clever they may be.

The Hokage herself had taken time out to visit the young ninja's bedside more than once, especially on the days when Shikamaru had been forced to go home. That is where Shizune found Tsunade on the fourteenth day after the exam, and she paid her respects to the sleeping girl before addressing her Hokage and former teacher.

"Pretty scary, what she did out there," Shizune said, tucking a pencil behind her ear and placing a clipboard of charts under her arm. "The Aburames are all in a tither about it. Their impenetrable family technique was completely…"

"Hijacked."

"Yeah. Some of the other clans are whispering about it too. Who knows how many ninja families out there use animal familiars."

"Enough to fret, I'm sure. But they can stop worrying about it. This was likely a one-time thing."

Shizune's mouth dropped open in surprise. "You don't think she'll wake up?"

"Oh, I'm sure she will," Tsunade said quietly, pointing to the folded green material on a nearby chair. "And this vest will be waiting right by her bedside when she does. But I don't think she's ever going to make the mistake of trying to overtake a hive mind again, and no one else who saw that fight will either."

"You suspect permanent brain damage?"

"Permanent emotional damage is more likely, but honestly who knows what to expect out of this? The Aburames maintain a psychic link of a sort with the insects, but it's just a link, not a co-existence of minds. For a few minutes this girl actually took over the minds and bodies of those insects the way you'd take over a human mind and body, but instead of one it was thousands of minds. Crammed into very tiny, very alien bodies."

"It must have been a nightmare," the younger medic nodded, but couldn't keep a shadow of curiosity from crossing her features. The other woman noticed.

"What is it, Shizune?"

"I was just thinking, Hokage-sama…that even if she can't or won't take over a hive mind again, there's nothing to stop her from taking over some other animal, something larger and more individual. Or taking over the mind of her opponent and his animal at the same time."

"That's a possibility, true," Tsunade sighed, "but let's not spread the idea around too much. There's a long history of shinobi using animal familiars, a long history and a lot of jutsus that one can counter or block—but not _take over_. People don't like it when someone robs them of their previously untouchable advantages."

Shizune gaped at her former sensei. "You're not suggesting—that's absurd. You don't think one of the other villages would actually…"

"Invade our village to assassinate a rookie chuunin barely out of the academy? Break into her hospital room and kill her as she sleeps, before she can wake up and tell people how she what she did? Yes. If there's any chance what she did could be replicated—and mind you I _do not_ believe it can—then it would render any gained by using jutsu that relies on an animal-human link useless. And the last thing we need is someone to send an assassin to stop a threat before it starts."

Tsunade walked toward the door, looking back on her assistant and smiling faintly. "Let people consider it a fluke-- and for Miss Yamanaka's sake, hope it turns out to be one."

* * *

Author's Notes:

Well, this is by far the furthest I've gotten in a chapter fic before. Yay for me! This one seems to have staying power, though it's been a long time between updates. Still, I'm determined to get through. I can see it all in my head, and it's fun to write. Nerve-wracking, but fun. I have to warn you guys—we're nearly a quarter through the story event-wise, and future chapters could get into the 40s in number, depending on how long or short they are. A typical chapter will range from 2-6 pages. I'm sorry they can't be longer, but that's as much as my brain will permit me to write at any one time, and I figure it's better to post as I go than save up and make longer posts farther apart. If it takes me this long for short chapters, imagine how long it would take to put out long chapters:sigh: It's hard, doing the whole college thing.

A few things to keep in mind for future chapters:

This story goes clearly AU after the manga time-gap. It will deal with events that happen after the three year period ends, and will go on past that to deal with Ino as an adult. This fic basically has three major parts: Ino as a child and teenager, Ino during the events immediately post-time-gap when Naruto returns and there's the subsequent confrontation with Orochimaru and Sasuke, and then finally Ino as a young woman and jounin. This fic is my version of Ino's life, an AU where things happen quite differently. Will Ino be in-character? I hope so. I'll try my best, but I'll be writing her as a teenager and later as an adult, which means complicated emotional stuff that we really can't infer based on what little we know of her 12 year old self. But I'll do my best.

Naruto's post-time-gap characterization might end up being somewhat different from canon. Not out of character, but more like an alternate possibility of how his character might have matured. Trust me, it'll make sense in the context of the story. Thankfully, we still don't know much about him in recent chapters, because it's all been action and plot-talk, but little characterization. So maybe my interpretation won't be far off after all? We'll just have to wait and see.

On pairings: There will be more than one Ino pairing in this story. I'm not going to tell you who, except that obviously Shikamaru is one of them already. Beyond that, wait and see. I believe in complicated romances so don't expect me to be all "Ino/whoever 4EVA OTP!" or anything. Not happening. I think you love different people in your life for different reasons, and Ino's just like everyone else in that regard.


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